NGO’s obstructing development of the country: Intelligence Bureau

The Intelligence Bureau has submitted a report to the Prime Minister in which it said that the vast NGO network in India is actually turning out to be detrimental to the development activity of the country. Some of the NGO’s are actually stalling developmental activity, especially in the areas of coal mining, hydal projects and uranium mines, the report mentioned as per sources.

The report particularly singled out Greenpeace, an NGO that played an active role in opposing coal block allotments in Madhya Pradesh. Greenpeace, has reportedly received 45 crores in the last seven years from abroad.

There are over 85,000 NGOs in the country and over 17,000 of them are not registered. Several of them receive funds from US, UK, Germany and several other European nations and organizations. Several previous reports apart from the current IB report have suspected that these NGOs indulge in stage managing protests, religious conversions and money laundering. United States of America donates Rs 3838.23 crore annually to NGOs in India, followed by UK (1219.02 crore), Germany (Rs 1096.01 crore), Italy (528.88 crore) and Netherlands (Rs 418.3 crore). These organizations do not submit their fund details to the government, no IT filing is also done, causing several questions to be raised with regards to their practices and motives.

“There are several genuine NGOs and we have the details of those. However there are at least 20 per cent of these NGOs whose actions are suspicious. If the government decides to deal with this with an iron hand it will not be difficult to bring this problem under check”, said an IB officer who was involved with the present report.

But because 20% of agencies are spurious does not necessarily mean that all NGOs should be negatively portrayed. NGOs, particularly with regard to Kudankulam and coal allotments in forest areas have questioned the developmental model of the government in the right manner. Removing forestry to dig out natural resources like coal, bauxite, dolomite, aluminium etc, driving out people from agricultural lands and from mountainous regions is wrong practice. Many NGOs are actually creating an environment of dissent and giving voice to rightful demands across the country. The business community across the nation is sure that the present government will be pro business. Will this government readily crush all voices of dissent or will it regulate such voices in the form of NGOs and allow them to continue their work?